Archive for the ‘Robot Virtual World’ tag

The robot marathon has started! As the large autonomous vehicle drives down the empty street, it decides when and where to turn. The bot navigates through the streets, using the dashed lines as guides. There are a lot of potential wrong turns that it avoids as it rolls by houses and picnic tables. Eventually, it drives under the banner at the finish line much to the programmer’s delight.

Did this happen in your town? Maybe! In fact it might be happening in your town right now because it’s not a physical robot – but a virtual robot driving through a virtual town!

Contest Overview

This is a game level created by Robotics Academy high school intern, Eddie, for the Beacons and Barriers level design competition. Eddie used Autodesk Inventor to create some of the models and imported them into the Robot Virtual Worlds Level Builder.

The competition asks participants to create a level for RVW Level Builder, including Checkpoints and obstacles, through which players will navigate a robot. In addition, participants must write instructions for the level.

This process starts with brainstorming and research. He jotted his notes on a piece of paper. You’ll notice in the image that the drawings are not perfect, that some things were crossed out. That’s perfectly fine – in fact – that’s what you want to do.

The process of jotting your ideas on paper allows you to see ideas. If they aren’t good or they won’t work like you thought they might, then you can modify them or come up with ones that will work. Notice how Eddie crossed out the first drawing with the curved road? He realized that roads might be easier to construct if they were straight.

Eddie then mapped out his level – showing the start tile, finish tile, checkpoints, and obstacles (in this case: grass). He then drew how the tiles should look. Afterward, he modeled the tiles using Autodesk Inventor. The Inventor Tutorials course on CS2N was helpful in showing him, step by step, how to create an object, export it and then import it into RVW Level Builder.

Once he made his level, Eddie tested it and wrote down ideas for ways to test it. He then gave the level to a peer to test. The test results proved that the level worked well and wasn’t too hard.

For the last phase, Eddie wrote the instructions for the level, zipped the level and the instructions into the same folder and submitted it to the competition.

How You Can Create Your Own Level

This was Eddie’s first time using the RVW Level Builder and he has had limited experience using Autodesk Inventor. He learned how to use these programs by enrolling in free courses at www.cs2n.org. You can too! And since they are online, you can learn at your own pace

The class is structured on a 5-phase version of the engineering process (Concept, Design, Production, Testing, Release). In each phase, you will take a further step towards completing your level, either through planning, creating, or testing your level.

Level Builder enables users to easily create levels and challenges for others to solve. Teachers can create custom challenges for their classrooms or generate unique challenges for each student. Multiple real and fantasy themed robots and objects are available for use. You can also import your own objects with the 3D Model Importer. Your level plays like any other virtual world. You can access all of the motors and sensors on the virtual robot to solve the challenge using ROBOTC code.

We are proud to announce that Landon Woollard from Shasta High School in Redding, CA is the first student to finish the CS2N ROBOTC student certification!

Mr. Brian Grigsby teaches the 2-hour per day, 5 days per week Career Technical Education Space, Science, and Engineering class at Shasta High School. Mr. Grigsby states, “[In this class,] we combine engineering principles with the VEX system with science exploration through NASA data programs (like the Mars Exploration Student Data Teams and the Student Planetary Investigator program) to emphasize how STEM related disciplines work together in our world.” As part of the curriculum he has incorporated CS2N.org and the ROBOTC certification, along with the physical part of building and programming. Students taking the class get lab science and elective credit for the University of California A-G requirements. The class also satisfies their computer proficiency for graduation.

Mr. Grigsby and Landon were nice enough to answer some questions for us…

What ways has the ROBOTC certification program and CS2N helped you reach your teaching goals?

Mr. Grigsby: It has allowed me to have another measure of student understanding and assessment to my course. By including ROBOTC certification, I am able to know how much the students truly understand about programming and where they need extra help.

Can you explain how students have responded to CS2N and the curriculum?

Mr. Grigsby: The students had been trained in the area of building and testing physical robots, so adding CS2N into the mix gives students another outlet to experience programming. They can also design programs and test them on the virtual robots before they test it on their physical robot. If there are any problems with motors, encoders, or other parts to the robot that are causing problems with their programming, they can go to CS2N and the Robot Virtual Worlds to make sure their programming is solid. Then they can troubleshoot their physical robot, and learn how to better engineer what they have built.

What is your favorite part of ROBOTC?

Landon: My favorite part of the ROBOTC course was the creativity required. The creative freedom allowing the accomplishment of various tasks is something that isn’t found in very many classrooms today, and really made it fun and challenging.

What did you find to be the most challenging part of learning ROBOTC?

Landon: What I found to be the most difficult part in learning this language was my previous coding knowledge in Java. I frequently found myself trying to implement many Java keywords into my ROBOTC code and trying to use methods from the

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Java API, which the compiler didn’t like.

What does it mean to have a ROBOTC Certification?

Landon: To me, the ROBOTC Certification means better opportunities. As a student who wishes to study computer science and software design in college, this class and certification course was an excellent opportunity to further expose myself to the coding aspects of computers. Also, having a physical documentation to show to college admissions will set me apart from every other student, hopefully increasing my chances of acceptance.

Landon’s classmate, Marisa Kuntz, was the first female to finish the certification a few weeks later. We want to congratulate Landon and Marisa, as well as Mr. Grigsby!

Note: This is one of the first schools to work through our ROBOTC certification. We are slowly rolling this out to all teachers and students, through CS2N, in the very near future. Check back for more details in the next few months!